AUBURN UNIVERSITY— Auburn University Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Timothy Boosinger, has announced the appointment of Diane Boyd of Furman University as director of Auburn University’s Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning, effective Sept. 1.

Noting that Boyd was selected following a nationwide search, Boosinger said, “Dr. Boyd brings an outstanding reputation for building strong faculty enhancement programs at her former institution. I am confident we have found an energetic, creative and engaging leader who understands the needs of our faculty and will work steadfastly to provide innovative teaching and learning programs.”

AUBURN UNIVERSITY—An Auburn University research team has produced a new drug candidate that could one day slow or even stop the deadly Ebola virus. The discovery will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry.

The group, led by professor of chemistry and biochemistry Stewart Schneller, has designed a compound aimed at reversing the immune-blocking abilities of certain viruses, including Ebola.

“In simple terms, the Ebola virus has the ability to turn off the body’s natural immune response,” Schneller said. “We have made a small tweak in compound structure that will turn that response back on.”

AUBURN UNIVERSITY – Graeme Lockaby, associate dean of research in Auburn University’s School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, has been named interim dean of the school, announced today by Provost Timothy Boosinger.

“Dr. Lockaby will provide excellent leadership for the School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences,” Boosinger said. “He has been at Auburn for 28 years and is a nationally respected authority for his work in forest sustainability.”

A national search will begin in July for a permanent dean. Lockaby succeeds Jim Shepard, who is returning to the faculty fulltime as a professor.

AUBURN UNIVERSITY – The world gets smaller as we use smartphones, tablets and laptops to communicate each day, touching every aspect of our lives. But can that technology aid in rural areas when someone needs to make a lengthy trip to see a medical specialist?

Business professors from Auburn University and the University of Alabama have collaborated on research that could ease the state’s health care access problem and give rural residents an alternative to traveling long distances to see that specialist.

Rafay Ishfaq, assistant professor of supply chain management in Auburn’s Raymond J. Harbert College of Business, and Uzma Raja, associate professor of management information systems in Alabama’s Culverhouse College of Commerce, applied supply chain and business analytics principles in research that introduces telemedicine to the public. Supply chain management involves managing all the activities that deliver products to the consumer in an effective and efficient way.

AUBURN UNIVERSITY – Auburn University scientists have made a discovery that shakes the very foundation of the evolutionary study of the animal kingdom.

For more than a century, researchers have believed that sponges represented the earliest living lineages of the animal tree. Thanks to modern genomic sequencing techniques, scientists in Auburn’s College of Sciences and Mathematics discovered that ctenophores, or comb jellies, are actually at the base of the animal kingdom. The research results have been published in the journal Nature and can be read at this link: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13400.html

AUBURN UNIVERSITY – The life of the man whose name is synonymous with premier golf course architecture, and is particularly well-known in the state of Alabama for the 26-course public golf trail that bears his name, is the subject of a new biography written by Auburn University professor and historian James R. Hansen.

“A Difficult Par: Robert Trent Jones Sr. and the Making of Modern Golf,” to be released May 8 by Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, tells the life story of the man behind many of the defining forms, shapes and challenges of the modern golf course.

“No golf architect is more historically significant than Robert Trent Jones Sr.,” Hansen said. “In a career spanning 70 years, from his first golf course in 1930 to his death in 2000, he spread the gospel of golf by designing over 400 courses in the U.S. as well as 27 countries on five continents. Because his journey to the status of ‘the world’s greatest golf architect’ was unprecedented, nothing in the history of golf compares with Jones’s epic life story.”